Working Backwards Lately I keep running into instances where different worlds coincide with a common theme. The theme I’m running into lately is flipping the funnel. Sometimes when you hit a stumbling block, it helps to flip the funnel and work the problem backwards. For example, consider these three topics: 1. Improving e-commerce sales. 2. Reducing manufacturing cost and [...]

Like a lot of people, I rely on voice mail a lot. Most of my sales are handled via online transactions with no assistance on my part. Most of my support issues are handled via email. But with a global customer base, I can’t always be there to answer the phone when a customer does [...]

Following MacWorld, Reg Developer started a rumor [1] that VBA would be going away from future versions of Microsoft Office for Windows. The speculation was based on Office 2008 for Mac dropping VBA (a big blunder by Microsoft, IMHO) and on Microsoft dropping their licensing program for 3rd parties to incorporate VBA into their applications. Sometimes [...]

Do you ever feel like you’re not in control of your own workday? A lot of people do. They get to work and have little say over how to spend their time. Sure, they can prioritize projects and tasks, but overall the projects and tasks are set by external forces. They don’t get to pick [...]

[This is a story about Bob. Bob is not his real name, but he is a real person. The events here were gleaned from intermittent conversations and pieced together as accurately as I could.] I’d never heard the term “lifestyle business” until I met Bob. It was a few years ago, not long after he started [...]

I’m always looking for new avenues to get the word out about FlowBreeze, so recently I ran an experiment using StumbleUpon’s advertising program. If you’re not familiar with StumbleUpon, basically it’s just a random site re-director. StumbleUpon users are served up random pages based on their preferences and demographics. If they like a page, they [...]

My oh so clever 11 year-old son Nathan gave me this flowchart. I gotta hand it to him. The kid’s tenacious. (Click to enlarge) 

Flowcharting Software at a Deep Discount FlowBreeze  is  was featured on Bits du Jour today. The sale is now over. Product DescriptionsFlowBreeze Basic is a simplified flowcharting tool that allows you to create flowcharts just by typing. It produces business document friendly black and white flowcharts in Excel. It integrates well into all Office documents and is [...]

FlowBreeze is now available in two editions Standard and Basic Flowcharting Software. The Basic Edition was created in response to customer demand for a light weight version of the product at a reduced price. It still utilizes the same, highly productivity text-to-symbol engine. But the Basic edition has a simplified start window, is limited to black [...]

Checking the morning round of news sites, I see that Google’s announcement of on-line storage is making a big splash. I fail to see the excitement. Not only is this already available elsewhere on the net, none of the other companies have a mission statement that reads like Google’s. From http://www.google.com/corporate/: “Google’s mission is to organize the [...]

Best of the Web Every time I see the Culinate site, three things happen. First, I wish my site looked that good. Second, I wish sold food instead of software, because even with the best site design in the world, you can’t match the richness and warmth that beautiful food conveys. Third, I wish I could [...]

I’m working on a new product, and I’ve been doing a lot of search for related content lately. Maybe it’s just me, but my feeling is that the results are getting worse and worse. Hence, the top 10 signs your Google search results suck flowchart: (Click to enlarge)

Fog Creek released a new version of FogBugz this week with something called Evidence Based Scheduling. It feeds project tasks and developer characteristics, along with historical data, into a Monte Carlo simulation then builds a probability distribution for project completion. By coincidence, I was reading about statistical methods for project estimation several months ago. (All I [...]

When I loaded up new screenshots a few weeks back, I decided to replace Lightbox 2 with John Reid’s PopBox. The more I see Lightbox, the more I find it annoying. It just seems slow. And no matter how many times I use it, I still hit the back button occasionally. It turns out I’m not [...]

Update: The method described below will cause IE7 to drop the extension. A modified version is pending. Until recently, I had no idea that IE6 cached downloads. I knew page and image caching were issues, but I didn’t know if affected exe’s and zip’s as well. FlowBreeze 2.0 was released 11 days ago, putting some of the [...]

Until this past week, I’ve never been able to tell whether AdWords was paying for itself or not. Somewhere between my ads and the payment processors, my tracking lost its way. It all hinged on a) the tracking working through the payment processors or b) the customer clicking the link to return to the BreezeTree [...]

FlowBreeze 2.0 was released a week ago. Very quietly. No formal announcemnent was made on the site. No press release was sent out. No current users were notified. I admit, it’s kind of a strange way of launching a major revision, but I had my reasons. The biggest issue was testing. With 4 Microsoft Office versions, [...]

In lieu of a full preview of FlowBreeze 2.0, I have posted the help file online. A firm release date has not been set, but an October launch is most likely. The full list of new features and improvements will be posted soon, but the following is a sampling of some of the more [...]

Fireclick has published some interesting numbers on software conversion rates on their site: http://index.fireclick.com/fireindex.php?segment=9 Fireclick is a web analytics company owned by Digital River, which owns a huge chunk of the payment processing market for software vendors. The data is compiled (anonymously) from all of Fireclick’s clients across different sectors. The software sector includes benchmarks for overall [...]

I admit I have totally waffled on my opinion of the Ribbon. At first I thought it was a nice looking change. Then I started using it and thought it was a nuisance. Then I got used to it (somewhat). Now, I’m just left frustrated by the amount of hunting around I still need to [...]

I was recycling some old magazines today, and I accidentally dropped the May issue of Quality Digest on the floor. It fell open to a page I had put a hard crease in. I looked at the page again and it still makes me go “Wow!” It’s just a single sentence from the Statistically Speaking section: “There [...]

Someone on the Business of Software forum asked how others motivate themselves to get working. This is a timely question. The jump from FlowBreeze 1.x to FlowBreeze 2.0 has been a long struggle. The code base has grown 3X and of course that doesn’t include the re-writes and thrown away code. Facing burn out in [...]

The Business of Software blog posted Part II of their microISV survey. (Part I van be found here.) I have to admit that I was surprised by some of the low revenue numbers. But I’m one of those obstinate people who refuses to believe something when it doesn’t fit his world view. At least for [...]

Due to the recent incompatibilities between Vista and the crappy 3rd party licensing tool I use for FlowBreeze, I have been re-examining how I look at anti-piracy protection. I’ve decided it all boils down to a simple formula: PL = F(SLS + SE + LS - DT) Where, PL = Piracy Loss (i.e. the revenues lost due [...]

When Google rose to the top of the search engine food chain, they created several commodities. One of them was backlinks. Google’s algorithm places a premium on the number of incoming links to a site. The more incoming links a site has, the higher the site will rank. The higher it ranks, the more traffic [...]

In my last post I kind of took a pot shot at Microsoft’s focus on SharePoint Services, insinuating that the internal push was driven in part by competition from Google Docs and Spreadsheets. But I don’t think that Microsoft really has much to worry about. Yeah, Google Spreadsheets are still kind of kludgey. But I’m [...]

It’s late Saturday night and before hitting the sack I decide to catch up on a little web reading. On a lark I went over to the MSDN blogs home page and searched for Excel. After all, I make Excel add-ins, and who better to find out the latest Excel news than from the Microsoft [...]

My first programming experience was in Computer Math class back in High School. It was taught by Mr. “write this down and never forget it” Gray. Mr. Gray was a witty guy, but he wasn’t Mr. Witty. Mr. Witty was the Biology teacher, but he was actually kind of loony. But he wasn’t Mr. Looney. [...]

Excel 2007’s new Ribbon menu takes a while to get used to. I’ve heard a lot of people say that their productivity dropped way down after switching to Office 2007, but eventually it rose up again to match the pre-2007 levels. Some people even say they’re more productive now. I’m finally getting used to it myself, [...]

Without much fanfare, BreezeTree Software released FlowBreeze v1.4 the other day. I’ll get to the fanfare bit later. The following is a summary of the changes. New Features Apply Styles: Applies the default styles to all the flowchart symbols and lines in the drawing. Toggle Gridlines: By default FlowBreeze hides the gridlines. This simply lets you toggle them [...]

Proposed SAT Question Liberal is to Linux as Conservative is to _________. Only in America would we politicize operating systems, but I’ve seen analogies like the one above before. Of course, in reality it doesn’t hold water. Most (sane) people don’t pick their operating system based on ideology. Douglas Karr has done some analysis and found that a [...]

I had planned to write a piece on my upcoming process mapping software, since I have been fielding a lot of questions on it lately. But it was one of those days, and I got sidetracked by coincidence. I was in my garage searching for a old copy of the ANSI standard for process mapping [...]

Everyone knows that Google is king when it comes to generating traffic for your website. In fact, many webmasters practically disregard Yahoo and MSN altogether in their SEO efforts. And software download sites? Their time has passed, right? I’d be lying if I said I didn’t agree with those statements. I look at my stats everyday, [...]

There’s a basic concept in Six Sigma called Voice of the Customer. When you’re defining a project, you need to identify the critical-to-quality (CTQ) elements in your process that matter to the customer. Too often though, the voice of the customer isn’t heard until _after_ they become a customer. What about potential customers? Taking a step [...]

If you use FireFox on a daily basis, no doubt you have your own list of favorite add-ons. But who has the time to constantly be on the lookout for new ones? So, this list was put together for anyone who does business online and needs tools to help you be more efficient. The Top 10 1. [...]

Before making my first blog post in a long time, I noticed that my Akismet spam filter for WordPress had rounded up a few hundred of the usual suspects. I hate to just delete them without review since I’ve had a few false positives. After a few page downs I noticed something. They all have [...]

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? - W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming As I battled the demons towards the planned launch of FlowBreeze 2.0, I stumbled upon Clarke Ching’s Rolling Rocks Downhill, a business novel about Agile Development in the tradition of Eliyahu Goldratt’s The Goal. It’s a [...]

Everyone likes to write about web sites and blogs catering to small businesses. That’s fine. Many people like Escape from Cubicle Nation, Wall Street Journal’s Startup Journal, OnStartups, Creating Passionate Users, among others. They’re good sites and are worth a read. Even if you read them just for inspiration or entertainment, you can usually pick [...]

Thanks to Matt Inglot for writing my belated New Year’s resolution for me. (Yeah, I’m running a little behind on that one.) The recent tax season has convinced me his 5 Tips for Staying on Top of Your Books for Small Business Owners is just the sort of advice that I should be implementing. Especially [...]

It may sound nutty, but I decided to use Excel 2007 to re-design my website. OK, the title of this post is a bit misleading. I didn’t actually design the web pages themselves with Excel 2007, but I did use it to create all the new graphics. The Excel 2007 development team did a wonderful job [...]

Overwhelmed by all the advice you read about running an AdWords campaign? Here’s a simple and concise list I’ve gathered from several reliable sources: Break your campaign in groups of 10-20 highly related keywords. Use exact matching or phrase matching, but avoid broad matching. Use negative keywords (e.g., -free) to improve CTR & lower cost. Put keywords in [...]

One of the more frustrating things about selling online is dealing with AVS mismatches. Sometimes you get an email from a customer complaining that your payment processor won’t accept their credit card. Most of the time, though, the sale is lost without notice - unless you’re scanning your transaction logs daily. So What is an AVS [...]

I wanted to say Thanks! to all the BreezeTree customers who have made this a great first year. The first six months were a little slow, but after the release of FlowBreeze 1.2, sales really started to pick up. FlowBreeze (a Flowchart Generator for Excel) has benefited from a lot of word of mouth marketing. Plus, [...]

Need to create some simple web graphics? A Buy Now! button or a Download link, perhaps? If you have Office 2007, look no further because you can create simple yet stylish graphics in just a few minutes. The new styles available for the built-in AutoShapes make it easy to drop a simple rounded rectangle, oval, circle, [...]

FlowBreeze 2.0 gets a new Start Flowcharting prompt. The old Start Flowcharting prompt only allowed you to set the start Terminator symbol text and location. The new window makes that optional, plus it allows you to create a set the page properties, show/hide the Excel grid lines, and either create a simple grid or [...]

As version 2.0 of FlowBreeze nears release I will preview new features. This first feature preview is the save as Picture function in the new Export tool. The Save As picture tool allows you to save just the flowchart as a picture or select both the flowchart and a range of cells. Actually, there doesn’t [...]

FlowBreeze build 1.3.42 was released today with the following fixes: FlowBreeze now supports symbols with over 255 characters. One character prefixes were being interpreted as node labels for circular Connector symbols. So, prefixes such as Q:, T:, and P: were incorrectly generating Connectors. The order of evaluation has been changed so prefixes are detected before applying other [...]

There is a known bug in several anti-virus products made by Computer Associates (and distributed to AOL customers) that is effecting some users of FlowBreeze. The problem becomes apparent when you click the FlowBreeze buttons to open the Settings window, Start Flowcharting, or try to register the software. Computer Associates/AOL are reportedly going to release a [...]

FlowBreeze build 1.3.40 has been released. The following bugs were fixed: Bug: Turning off prompt for start terminator still resulted in being prompted. Fixed. Bug: Turning off prompt for stop terminator still resulted in being prompted. Fixed. Bug: Clicking Cancel on terminator prompt locked up Excel. Terminator prompt turns off Excel screen updating for faster rendering. Clicking Cancel [...]

If you’re one of the early adopters of Excel 2007, then FlowBreeze is ready for you. The flow chart add-in for Excel is now Excel 2007 compatible. Excel now has a Ribbon replacing the classic menus and toolbars, but the FlowBreeze toolbar is still accessible under the Add-Ins tab of the Ribbon. More info (and pictures!) [...]

This has been a really big week here at BreezeTree Software. Apparently, there are over 5000 new employees here. I know because everyday I get hundreds of emails for them. I’m not too sure about mussolini@breezetree.com. It probably won’t be too long before the other employees start complaining about him. And ehemp@breezetree.com - what’s he, some [...]

Just a quick note - I released a Flow Chart Symbols Cheat Sheet today. It contains pictures of the 30 most commonly used flow chart symbols, along with their name(s), and a short description. Some flow chart symbols have different meanings under different uses, so those are identified as well. Click here to visit the Flow [...]

What a way to start a Monday morning. I installed the del.icio.us Bookmarks extension for FireFox. The installer prompts you to import all your bookmarks into your del.icio.us account. I like to keep some bookmarks private on my PC. I’ve got bookmarks to banking and investment accounts, among other things that I don’t want to post [...]

Sometimes when someone says something really nice, you just have to spout about it. As a flowchart tool maker, I use flowcharting in development all the time. True, most of my flowcharts are for the process, not the code, but, I’ve always had the feeling that I was a dying breed. That’s why it’s been such [...]

Tom Peters wants you to believe that he is selling great insight. When he burst on the scene after publishing In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies (Collins Business Essentials), he instantly became the darling of the TQM movemnent. And he deserved it too. He was an engaging speaker, made great videos, and [...]

The FlowBreeze 2.0 incorporates a flowchart template loader. Since the flowchart templates are separate from the main body of software, I’ve decided to release some of them them for free download now. The complete flowchart template package that ships with FlowBreeze 2.0 are Excel template files (*.xlt) and come in the following flavors: Cross-functional / deployment flowchart [...]

Looking back at some of my earlier flowcharts, I can only think to myself, “Man these things are ugly”. So I hand selected some of my uglier flow chart symbol formats. Hopefully the image below conveys why the Flow Chart Symbol Style Sheet is a must for flowcharting in Excel:

Do you… Like colorful flow charts but hate the time it takes to make them? Know good looking color schemes when you see them but have the artistic skills of a caveman? Want a free and easy way to spruce up your Excel flow charts and process maps? Yeah, me too. So I created the Flow Chart Styles Cheat [...]

Why would I want to make flowcharts? This is a surprisingly common question I get asked ever since I started BreezeTree Software. To me it’s a no-brainer. I spent most of my career working on process improvement, and flowcharts and Pareto charts did most of the heavy lifting. There’s nothing like visualizing a process to help [...]

Sometimes you need a drawing shape that isn’t included in the standard Microsoft Office set of shapes. Maybe you need to add header blocks to all your process shapes. Maybe you need to need to add one of those little speed bumps to your flow lines to tell intersecting lines apart. Or, maybe you’d like [...]

When I read The E-Myth Revisited, I have to admit my first impression was “What a load of crap!” After all, it takes 200 pages to say what could be said in less than 10. I’m busy. I don’t have time for that. Through analogies to the world of McDonald’s franchises and small bakeries alike, [...]

If you ever take a class that teaches formal flowcharting, they might teach you that all flowcharts start off with a Trigger Event. A Trigger Event is an action that gets the process started. A trigger event for an order processing flowchart could be “Customer places order”. A trigger even for a payment processing flowchart [...]

Do you love a bargain? Of course you do. Everybody loves a bargain. If you love software bargains in particular, then you owe it to yourself to check out Bits du Jour because they offer a new software bargain everyday. If you’re on the consumer side of the equation, then you can keep tabs on [...]

Why flowchart with FlowBreeze? Ask yourself these questions… Do you need to standardize your business processes? Do you want to run your business the E-Myth way, like a franchise? Would you like a tool that is intuitive and easy to learn? Would you like a tool that lets you add analysis to your process flow diagramming? Would you like to [...]

I installed a piece of software recently that sealed my fate in the tongue-wagging war over Web 2.0. This is one of those topics I steer away from. It’s too much like politics. Just as I prefer issues over politics, I prefer solving problems to debating the tools used to solve problems. One part of the [...]

In the past I have written a number of articles on how to flowchart with Excel. While I will continue to do so in the future, I will be switching more and more to creating flowcharting video tutorials, which I’ve dubbed “Flowtorials”. Since I’m no USC Film School grad, the Flowtorials will be rough cut in [...]

If, like me, you’re a big fan of the Axialis Object Packs, then one blog you should definitely know about is My maaads!. Kudesnick, the blog owner, did the Vista Icon Pack available on the Axialis web site. He now has 1165 icons in his Vista Icons Pack 3. Check it out.

Just a quick announcement … FlowBreeze 1.2 has been released, with the set of features list in the previous post. The press release is coming soon.

At quick note on the pending release of FlowBreeze Standard Flowchart Software, version 1.2 … Version 1.2 will be released soon. It is a small revision, but it includes some of the most requested feature changes: Ability to vary the symbol width (in FlowBreeze 1.0 the symbols are a fixed width). Choice of fixed width and fixed [...]

You should always be honest with your customers because transparency is the foundation upon which good customer relations are built. So when several people have asked about my newsletter sign-ups, I have been honest about it. The bottom line is, I’m trying to convert clicks into sales. Clicks don’t always convert into sales immediately, so [...]

I started using Google Sitemaps several months ago to ensure that my site was getting fully indexed by the Googlebot. Aside from the obvious indexing advantages, Google Sitemaps also offer a few other insights to your web site. One of the more interesting ones is the Page Analysis feature. Page Analysis has a Common Words section [...]

I have a back log of articles I’ve written that mostly just need screen shots and some final polishing up. So once again, I’m blogging about new Excel flowcharting articles I’ve posted. The first article is How to Make Flow Charts in Excel. It provides a good overview of the basics to creating flow charts in [...]

Hyperlinks are one of those things you love even when you don’t realize it. Click a link and bam! - you’re there. Open a document, browse to a web page, or launch your email. Did you know you can even use them to hop around an Excel flowchart? You can and it’s pretty easy to do. This [...]

A flowchart is a great way to visually depict a process, but if you want to analyze it, step it up to a process map. What are process maps? They’re a Six Sigma version of flowcharts that add attributes to each flowchart process step. Typical attributes include cycle time, defects per unit, delay time, ownership [...]

Inspired by a new Excel add-in developer, I’ve decided to create a list of Excel developer resources. It’s sparse now, but I will upate it periodically. Books I’ve only found 2 that are even worth mentioning. Professional Excel Development by Bullen, Bovey, and Green is the best book on the market for .xla and COM add-ins. Microsoft .NET [...]

Here are 3 easy to do PAD file improvements you should make because they will increase your download site traffic, bump up your sales, and give you a nice little SEO boost. — #1 -Add Keywords to Your Product Name This is so simple and obvious that if keywords aren’t already in your Product_Name field, you should [...]

The first time you play around with the flowchart tools in Excel 2007 (aka Excel 12) you can’t but wonder about the whole “Substance over Style” maxim. Sometimes Style is pretty cool, too. I used the on-line demo to take these screenshots, so there are some visual artifacts. Also, I didn’t line up one of the [...]

Well, not really. But it’s been a week since I started this blog, and you may be wondering where all the posts are? They’re coming, they’re coming. I’ve got two posts I’m working on - a quick review of the flowchart tools in Office 12 (aka Office 2007) and an intro to scripting VBA in [...]

In the Flow is first and foremost a company blog for BreezeTree Software. As such I’ll try to keep it on the level and post only about “important” stuff. “Important” is a dubious term, but in this blog it applies mostly, but not exclusively, to: Company news. Product anouncements. FlowBreeze and other (future) product tips. General flowcharting, process mapping, [...]